Evan Sanders's Blog, page 67

Lessons In Passion

There have been so many lessons in passion.

It’s been said that the wild horse of fear can be handled two ways. You can stand in a cage with it and it will rear and buck and destroy you, or you can send it out into a pasture, watch it kick and prance…and then see it lay down in the grass after it has tired itself out.

This is one of the first lessons in passion that I have learned over this past year.

There is great power, beauty, and humility in learning the hardest lessons you are destined to learn. I knew these lessons were coming, and they showed up at my front door – and for the first time in my life, knowing how painful some of them were going to momentarily be, I said “Come on in, I know it’s been a while since we’ve done this.”

How freeing is that?

You have no idea. You have to court your pain, insecurities, uncomfortableness, doubts, anxieties, worries…all of it you have to welcome and fell through it. When you start trying to kick feelings or act out of accordance with your words, then things start swirling. You will feel it first in your stomach – that tight feeling throughout your abs. When you have a loose and breathing belly, you witness the world instead of feeling controlled by it.

Every single day I take 30 minutes to sit down and meditate, and by the recommendations of one of the books I am reading I do this naked (totally vulnerable, and yet powerful and connecting with consciousness itself) and detach myself from the part of myself that feels like it is detached from the world. I feel into my breath. Down into my belly, released up through my back. Whatever comes my way I watch as if it is part of a traveling show. Memories come in, sometimes happy, sometimes painful…and yet each of these I let go when it is their time and come back to my breath. I’m not grasping. I am no longer holding onto the great times and resistance the bad times. Another one of the lessons in passion.

I never understood this about myself before, but I have come to find that my always watching and observing what is going on in the world is actually me soaking up inspiration for my deepest purpose. Since I felt disconnected from that purpose, the watching and soaking everything in didn’t really make all that much sense to me. I’ve had a few of my very close friends tell me that even though others think I am tuning out to the world, they in fact know that I am tuning in and connecting deeply. This quietness, this complete state of relaxation, almost like a state of bliss in itself is me connecting down to my masculine core. The core of me that acts as a mirror to the world and literally functions from a place of love and light. This feeling is new, it’s powerful, and it has awoken vibrations within me that have never been felt before. I am now identifying with the thing that does not change. The energies that have been here before me for infinite amounts of time and the energies that will be here far after we are all gone. I am sitting as a representation of love – not having to necessarily speak it, think it, or write it…but just being it. 

How many lessons in passion have there been lately?

Many. Many. Many. Many. Everything around me has relaxed. Even tough situations that used to run my life are loosening. They are unknotting. When it is time for me to sit down and write, I start opening myself up to see the ever-changing and morphing nature of everything that is going on around me. This feminine energy is beautiful, it’s chaotic, it’s destructive, it’s happy…it’s…everything that the world represents in itself. Infinite possibilities and infinite combinations and permutations of what life could be. Ever changing. Ever morphing. This type of energy inspires me deeply and has been explained to me as the reason I have been able to write in the way that I do.

When I start feeling into emotions, into thoughts, into the changing nature of things (good and bad) that is that energy flowing through me. That is the nature of the feminine coming through me – and to me, that’s beautiful. But I never lose my core, I just allow my core to become inspired by this energy. What used to seem so disconnected is now so inspired, so full, and so open. I’ve talked about this as “the unfolding of things.”

About a month plus ago, I had a really interesting coaching conversation with one of my mentor coaches about ambition, goals, and dreams. Anyone who knows me and who knows The Better Man Project could probably nail it down as say that I was pretty ambitious in my striving towards things. That was exactly what she was trying to teach me to reconsider. There’s this massive narrative that we are involved in that tells us that we will be happy when. Happy when we achieve this goal, happy when we get that person, happy when we have the amazing car, happy when we eventually…in metaphorical terms, land on the island of “where it all pans out.”

The problem is…that island doesn’t exist. So we are constantly rowing towards an island that appears as visible, but isn’t tangible. As you can probably imagine, we go out and strive for more, more, more and when we get that, our thirst is never satisfied. We live our lives for the sake OF PROGRESS instead of deepening and development into who and what we already are. If you know anything about history, many atrocities have been committed for the sake of progress. The same attitude can be brought into our lives. My challenge was “who am I without goals?” What I found is that I am Evan Sanders without goals…but with goals, I have no idea who I am. I am a shapeshifter – always stressing, always focused on the future, always out of the present, and lacking that deep connection – the deep connection I feel now to everything.

Now that my mind has been stretched in that way, I can see the difference between going on a journey and being in one. 

My life, I realize now, is the most exciting and beautiful journey and story I will ever be in. I am the hero of this story, and with that everything will be thrown my way. That’s the point. That’s the beauty of it. I will be challenged, tested, courted, stretched, expanded, broken and all of the expressions of life will come my way.

How exciting would that be though?

To be in the story instead of always feeling like you have to get somewhere. Maybe right here and right now is the only place we are supposed to be? Well, I think it’s far from a maybe. I think it’s definitely. To be in the story and to be happy in your boat – not necessarily going “somewhere” but instead floating along and enjoying the opportunities of today’s life – would be a gift in itself.

This is a gift that I have been tapping into, and this is one of the final lessons in passion, for now, that I want to talk about today.

Life has an interesting way of bringing the best plot lines to your life. Let it unfold in front of you instead of always trying to force a change in the writer’s hand. What is going to happen is going to happen – and in truth, that’s perfect in itself.

Please feel free to contact me at thebettermanprojects@gmail.com to give me feedback, ask me a question, or simply open up and talk about something. I am never too busy to hear what’s going on with you.

P.S. If you would also do me a favor and leave a comment below with your thoughts, that would be greatly appreciated. Till next time.

– Evan Sanders

 

So I Went Running For Answers

It’s going to be difficult to accurately describe what has been going on with me lately because I don’t even think I can comprehend what is happening. When things seemed to fall apart, a new way opened…and out of that new way I went running for answers – and they all came to me.

A year ago, and I don’t want to get into the details of what happened in this series of dreams because it’s pretty personal to me, I was shown something that changed the course of my life. For a year, I fought with that series of dreams because I wasn’t exactly sure what to believe. I wasn’t sure if it was real, if it was a sign, if I was being sent a message – so I floundered. But as with all things, it cycled back around and delivered itself right back to me when, like I said, I was kicked in the butt when things fell apart. It made itself known. That moment, despite coming out of a rough time, once again, made itself aware that it was there to change my life.

I never quite understood what those dreams were trying to tell me all along until now. These past few weeks have been pretty opening and transformational, but I believe and see it clearly now. I came out of those dreams hands shaking, crying uncontrollable tears of happiness, and with an answer to literally every single question I had ever wanted to know, ask, or even more crazy – questions I hadn’t even know I was going to ask yet.

The answer was this – to soak the world in love.

I started down that path a while ago, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to understand that my purpose, the purpose behind all of the writing here in The Better Man Project and with everything else I have ever done, was to soak the world in light and love. As you could imagine, that’s a pretty big moment when you begin to understand the reason for why you are truly here. Then, as my life always has it, everything started to happen all at once. Things started snapping into place…expressions of my purpose became more and more clear and I started traveling down this amazing and mysterious rabbit hole that drove me to the place where I am now.

I am connecting deeply. I am opening massively. I am unfolding like crazy.

My depth in the past had often been a distraction because it was connected to a deeply rooted disconnection from the world around me. What changed? I started to understand that this world around me, the most feminine energy there is – the ever changing and morphing nature of what is – is actually what i need to connect most deeply with. It’s something that I need to fully witness and understand it’s beauty. My disconnection in the past drove me to have a bit of an untrusting attitude and become more of an observer in the stands instead of a player on the field. This being in the stands did allow me to start to express some of the inspiration I had been consumed with, but it’s nothing like the feeling of actually being on the field of life.

So I started to dive into my meditation, into my practices, and into finding ways to continue to expand my deepest desires and gift giving, and pain started to seep out of me like syrup out of a maple tree. Situations came up, I wrapped them in as much love as I possibly could, and I could feel it oozing out of me. It’s an absolutely insane feeling that I have never felt before. Out of my pain, worries and troubles, I have started to be able to transform these stories into tales of love and passion. I have started to become The War Painter – going into this often insane world and being able to deeply experience life without turning it in on myself or turning it out against others…and instead…letting it pass through my filter of light and love and bring a little bit more happiness into this world.

There’s a beautiful transformation going on right now.

I can feel it in my bones. I am changing drastically. I am not changing for the worst or becoming something I am not, but instead, I am becoming everything and anything that I had every felt, known, or dreamed of. It’s a tad bit scary at times, but I can feel myself unfolding like a flower. That opening is allowing me to see things much more clearly, to allow the anxiety, pain, and worry to drip out of me, and to come at situations in a brand new way.

I am beyond grateful for the decision I made to start coaching school, and know that this is just the beginning.

I also can’t wait to help people bring these transformations into their lives as well.

WordPress.com users, I am back. I took some time to evaluate WordPress.org and although customization is a really cool thing, I needed to come back to this amazing community that has supported my work time and time again. I look forward to the comments, and will make a promise to respond back to each and every one of them.

So bring it on. Bring on the unfolding. Bring on the experiences. Bring on the awkward situations and the tough ones as well. Bring on the happiness. Bring on the thoughts and emotions. Bring it all to me. I am ready. I am open. I am fully here ready to experience it all…and tell some stories along the way.

– Evan Sanders

Courting Death

 

 

“Just as the first aspect of work brings our life into the present, the second aspect explores this “present” as the moment-to-moment unfolding of the “passing show” of consciousness. We come to know our states of minds intimately, watching our long-conditioned patterns from an open and compassionate awareness that neither clings nor condemns the evolving process” – Stephen Levine – A Year To Live

It’s probably a topic that I have never really talked about before, but since it has been brought up time and time again in my studies, meditation, discussions and the books I am reading, I think it’s time to address this idea of preparing for your own death.

We’ve been trained to not think about this moment out of fear. But what if we could see the end and understand how we wanted to live all the way through. Many are not given this moment of realization and relaxation into their impending death until it’s too late. Time after time I have read articles about those on their deathbed and how much regret they have in those final moments. To me, this would be my worst nightmare – to be met by deep regret for not going after what I loved, to not bring light and love into this world, and to have let fear – the final excuse – to stop me from doing what I love.

I know that feeling very well…the feeling of fear holding me back from what I need to do. But as of late, I have been walking through these moments with courage.

So what if I was going to die in a year? What would I do?

I would love my heart out.

I would meet this life with all the compassion and kindness I could find in myself.

I would coach others.

I would give the grandest speech I possibly could.

I would write a book of all the lessons I have learned throughout my young life.

I would deeply love a lover.

I would hold my family tight.

I would laugh my heart out with my friends.

I would explore unexplored lands.

I would live in the moment, not allowing my emotions and fears to own me, but rather see them as a sweeping wave and watch them go.

To be completely honest and upfront with you right now, I am on my way to living that life. I finally have found that in myself and I am ready to take on this life as if I was dying in a year. I’ve been challenged these past couple of weeks, but that challenge has brought the best out in me. I have my moments for sure, but I am handling myself with much more care than I used to. Compassion and kindness are coming to the forefront.

But something else really interesting is happening…

The darkness. I wrote a book called Two Wolves and released it a couple of months ago, and the premise of the book was the battle between the dark wolf and the white wolf. But it dawned upon me coming out of my meditation the other day, that there is another way. What if you could court death just as much as you could court life? What if, you welcomed that dark wolf instead of fearing it, or even trying to starve it.

One of the main challenges from my coaches this years is to bring myself into the dark side and get comfortable there. I have not spent much time there willingly. Most of the time I have spent there felt like I got thrown into that place. But with a little nudge, I went there. I started exploring that place through my meditation and getting in touch with deep emotions that many would consider dark. There’s light and strength in that place though. There’s a lot of healing to be done there, but I can see already the value of going there. If I can constructively bring those emotions and feelings to the forefront and turn them into art, I am not only painting the current picture of my life, but the undercurrents of the past as well.

I’ve never thought of it this way before. I’ve always just tried to bring the light in as much as possible. As if “the light” was a separate thing. But I realized today, I am the light. Me. The light. And whatever situation, good or bad I am in, I can bring myself into it because I am not attached to it. Like it said above, I am witnessing the “passing show.”

There has been a lot of change going on lately. But that change that many may see as unstable, is actually change where my roots are reaching farther and farther down into the ground. The depth is arriving, and I am going places that I tried to avoid for the longest of times. I am going there willingly, with love and compassion…instead of going there in fear of what might happen. This is a very different way of doing things. This is very exciting. They say that anxiety or fear is just excitement without the breathing haha. So I’ve been breathing a lot. Slowing down a lot. And no matter what has been thrown my way, I am seeing things for as they are – waves of life versus things happening to me.

I can feel myself unfolding. I can feel myself loving more every day. I can feel myself forgiving. I can feel myself softening. Warming. Flowing…and yet at the same time becoming more stable in the reasons for why I am here.

I’m just being.

– Evan Sanders

Courting Death is a post from: Inspirational Stories About Life

Feeling Through Some Things

It’s been an interesting week plus. It’s been, challenging, painful, happy, transformational, full of growth, full of anxiety, beautiful, heartbreaking, and many more things. In fact, it’s probably been the full spectrum of life itself. And for all of the struggling I’ve gone through, somehow I can still keep that smile on my face. It’s not fake, it’s real. But still, dang some of this stuff is hard to work with.

I feel like I’ve had something torn out of me. Not exactly the best feeling in the world. Not exactly what you plan out to have happen. Despite my ability to continue down my path and to focus on my purpose, there it is still functioning inside of me I know anxiety well – it’s something I am working through these days. That feeling lives in your gut. But this is about 6 inches higher up than that. This is living in an entirely different place, another place I know as well.

Nights, when my creative mind starts to come out to play are the toughest. When my mind goes from work mode into creative mode, I can play colorful tapes of memories in my mind. I feel through them. I feel into them. One of the greatest gifts I’ve been given is to be able to paint a scene in my mind. In full detail I can describe it – the more profound the moment, the more detail I have in my memory. The landscape, the lighting, the smells, the feelings…it’s all there. It’s all living and breathing in the back of my mind ready to be accessed.

I used to avoid this place like the plague. I used to run from it because I didn’t want to create any more hurt for myself. Now, I’m really trying to live a bit differently. I go back, and as tough as it is, I sit in my big red chair outside and breathe through it. In any moment, there exists an abundance of light – you just have to be willing to tap into it. For me, learning to let things go has been one of the toughest and hardest lessons for me to learn. It goes against everything inside my body. Every single cell says fight and yet I know this isn’t where I’m going to grow. Life is a constant coming and going of things and the only way I am going to be able to express my deepest love for this life, for the people in it, and for myself…is to be able to give fully and let go just as hard.

So like I said, I’m feeling through some things right now.

As empty as some moments feel inside, there’s almost always a presence of being full. I’m learning to nourish myself. I’m learning to be home wherever I am. I’ve been working on going into any space, whatever space that is, and allowing my heart to come out to play. First I let it occupy my body, then the area around me, then throughout the walls of the room, and sometimes I work with even trying to fill up the mountains surrounding me and then blanketing the rest of the world. This process is an ongoing process, one that takes me moment after moment to come back to and try again and again.

To be honest, I have absolutely no idea where I am really going with this post. This happens once in a while when I am just sitting here and then all of the sudden…blank. Maybe that’s the point. Free. Present. Breathing.

– Evan Sanders

Feeling Through Some Things is a post from: Inspirational Stories About Life

For The Gentlemen, You Won’t Finish Last

 

Gentlemen, you’ve heard it a million times – “Nice guys finish last.” But I have something much deeper to offer you today. I am here to tell you why you are going to come out on top by leaps and bounds. First, I will start with my story.

Let’s go back 10 years when I took my first steps into high school.

I remember being dropped off that first day, 6’1 a buck seventy-five at best, tucked in collared shirt and tan slacks. I walked through those main doors and felt anxiety running through my veins and like a 30lb weight was in my stomach. Girls everywhere. Upperclassmen everywhere. What the hell was I doing here? Not a lick of confidence and didn’t know a single person. Here I was. High school.

Throughout high school I attempted to make friends, date girls, be like the cool kids – in fact, I tried to be like everyone and everything I could possibly find. I molded and morphed myself into personas that I thought other people would enjoy, but that only left me feeling lost and helpless throughout my early schooling years. Along the way I began to find some things I liked – sports and guitar – but continued to struggle finding a way to fit in to a community that had been pretty tightly knit since they were all in grade school. So I didn’t fit in. In fact, besides having a handful of friends, I found myself wandering around alone at lunch trying to relax. I was going through some pretty rough times for a few years and didn’t really have that many people to help me along.

Fast forward to college and entering in as an athlete, I was surrounded by a team atmosphere where all of the guys spent time with one another and drank like crazy throughout the week. I inserted myself into that culture in the first few months but quickly felt that same type of feeling of lack of connection because the activities really didn’t resonate with me. I guess you could say that the years of my life before I started writing were as much about finding out what I didn’t like vs. finding out what really got me ticking. To add onto the fire, my personality really started morphing into someone who really didn’t give a sh*t about much except for baseball – only leading to more emptiness inside. As my elbow began to deteriorate more and more, that feeling of purpose loosened from me daily and everything else around my started to fall apart. Then a few months after I had to quit sports altogether, it really did all fall apart…and I would have to pick myself up from the ashes and start all over again.

I didn’t realize it then, but that urge to pick up and start writing what was going on in my heart and mind was in fact the deep bubbling up of my purpose that I continued for many years after that moment to look for. I nourished myself. I soothed the pains. I brought up things that I was too afraid to ever tell anyone and admitted them to myself. I healed and began to defrost everything that had frozen over. The horrible writer in high school that had all his papers ripped to shreds by red ink because a writer about life, love and passion. Who would have thought?

The Better Man Project started about a year after I began to write, and once again, I realize now that it was simply an expression of my purpose in a deeper way. I decided to put these thoughts out there for everyone to read – another way of freeing myself from the restrictions of my own separate self and beginning to let other people into my life. This process of vulnerability every single day brought out lessons that I never knew I would learn – the importance of love, passion, integrity, perseverance, and many more character traits. These were all things that were taught to me throughout the years, but I never came to the conclusion myself that they were anything more than just things that you could bring forth in yourself when you really needed them…until I started writing.

Writing continued to heal my wounds. Tears came out, smiles came forward, and moments of deeply resonating passion came through me throughout the years. I went from very dark masculine energy to being able to bring out inspiration from feminine energy. I started to become motivated, saw that I could do things with my body in a positive and constructive way, and that all of the things I feared in my high school years and my early college years were only fears…they didn’t have to control who I was or what I was going to do in this moment. Philosophy books started to open up. Reading became a very regular thing for me…and the continued search for deep purpose – even though I was doing it already – continued on and on and on.

I softened significantly over those years of writing. My heart began to open up to people and I also went through a lot of pain and suffering at the same time. Love gained, love lost. Friends gained, friends lost. And yet throughout the development of myself, I still felt off center. I was always searching for something. I was always in the place of wanting and getting. I was offering myself to the world but at the same time, I was blind to the fact that it was exactly what I should be doing. I think mostly because I wasn’t making any money off of it or because I was trying to figure out if it was just a hobby or not. Needless to say, my centered self was ready and waiting for me to just realize it but I continued to live in the past or the future…disconnected from the present.

Couple more years went by and that purpose I am talking about started to become louder and louder and louder. I started adding things into my repertoire such as podcasting, video blogs, different social media accounts to promote different types of content, etc…and all of these were natural extensions of those first few moments of deciding to write to bring out light and love. Everything, now that I look back on it, was simply an expression of that deep purpose. It was all rooted in love…and it took me roughly 5 years to really see that it was the case.

Whether I knew it or not, that purpose directed my life more than I could have possibly imagined. It allowed me to pull the trigger on going to coaching school, on starting to begin my speaking career, and taking the next steps with my fitness life and many other things. That purpose allowed me to see the weak spots in my life, to start diving into gaining skills in the fields of relationships, success, living, fitness, etc and helped me start a life long learning process. I began to morph and change over time, and as time went on itself…things really started to pick up some momentum. And now here I am April 9th with the feeling of some serious energy behind me.

So where does the concept of nice guys finish last in all of this come into play? Well if you’ve stuck with me so far…right now.

I have spent years and years and years working on myself, my life, my goals, and helping other people achieve their ideal lives as well. I believed that I had to be a “nice guy” in order to date girls and to get along with people in the world. But I’m here to offer you something far deeper than just being a nice guy today. I am here to offer you a different way that may help you change the course of your life – something I wish I had known 5 years ago when I first started writing. Don’t get me wrong, I am very very glad I went through this entire process because I have learned so much more along the way, but it would have saved me a lot of heartbreak and grief throughout the years.

Spend more time finding your purpose, than chasing girls, going out and getting drunk, hiding in your house away from others, looking through social media on your phone, or any other surface level distractions there are out there.

Men, find your purpose. Find what really resonates with you and throw yourself into that without any compromise on your character and values. How do you find your purpose? Well I can tell you for one that it isn’t some cognitive exercise that you can go through. No, it’s something that deeply resonates within you…beyond your mind and beyond your body. What makes your soul stir when you think about it? Is there that very deep resonating frequency that you may have tuned into once in a while? Tap into that. That whisper. That inner voice that eggs you on to really try something. It may or may not make sense to anyone else at all, but that doesn’t matter. All it has to do is make sense to you. I spent years ignoring this vibe because I thought that I could never be doing what I am doing now. I didn’t think I could create a profession out of writing, coaching, speaking and helping others bring light and love into their lives. I didn’t think it was possible. But the energy was always there…and the more I tap into it now the more I know how true and honest that energy is.

Be a man of purpose. Be a man of uncompromising character. A man of purpose knows how to make decisions in this life because if he is ever confronted with an obstacle or a situation, he dives deep down into that energy and asks himself, “If I make this decision, does it serve as an expression of my deepest purpose?” You will know the answers very very soon.

These types of men, the men who go through the process of tapping into their deepest sense of self and purpose, and use that purpose to help bring light into the world are the ones who change the world. I am not simply trying to pat myself on the back here, but I know without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that the energy that is inside of me can help make a difference in the lives of other people around the world. I ignored for a long time the effect that I had on other people because I didn’t know that this was what I was supposed to be doing. But now that I see more clearly, I look at the tens of thousands of comments, the hundreds of emails and the hundreds of thousands of followers, and know that if I continue to really open up, to throw my heart into my purpose and to bring the gifts I have to this world…things can change…and they are already changing.

You may be wondering…but what about all the other stuff? The girls, the friends…the everything. When you are coming from a place of depth, your character and your dream will take you in the right direction. You have to trust it without a shadow of a doubt. I know that I have floundered in my life, that I have shown unnecessary insecurity, that I have talked myself out of dates and torn apart relationships because I didn’t know what I was up to in this world. I can guarantee you that the same thing will happen to you if you don’t understand what it is that really makes you tick. Find that, and bring light into this world, and everything else will pan out exactly the way it’s supposed to. You will begin to express yourself in ways that you never thought possible. Everything you do in terms of “future dreams and goals” actually become “future ways of expressing my deepest gift.” There’s a huge difference. You will end the unsettling and unsatisfying process of chasing things that you will never actually be able to grab…and you will bring yourself into the present…always asking yourself “How can I give in this moment.”

So find your purpose. I promise you that if you take that path…you will reap all that this life has to offer.

– Evan Sanders

For The Gentlemen, You Won’t Finish Last is a post from: Inspirational Stories About Life

What The Stardust Made In Me

 

I’m still working through things. Every day is a new day full of challenges, little wins and big wins. I am a work in progress. It was a couple of years ago that I gave up “making it.” So every single day, I come into it fresh willing to take on the obstacles. There’s a difference between willingness to play the game of life and the existence of fear. Do I still get afraid? Yes all the time. But do I continue to move forward – absolutely.

It’s not my mind that starts running late at night, but my heart starts to turn. Like the backing of an intricate clock, the little gears start to move as the sun is going down and I really start to feel. I feel what is going on in my life. I feel for the people in my life and who I love deeply. I also begin to feel this type of energy. It isn’t a high strung energy that exists up above the neck, but more of a deep long wavelength that sits somewhere deep in the chest. The transitions in my day are pretty interesting as the sun goes down and the moon starts to come out to play. I know I’ve always been affected by the seasons…maybe I am affected by the day’s motions as well.

I think it’s important to remember that your depth is a gift. It can often be misconstrued at times, but the depth of your feelings and your heart really are something to cherish. At times, I had heard from people that the depth of me could make them feel uneasy at times…and yet others they said that they could feel deep trust and love. I do believe that the uneasy times were sparked by a deep conflict inside about my purpose and this yearning for finally having something to throw myself into fully. Just as my depth can make people feel loved, when I am lost inside, it can make them feel that same amount of turmoil.

But life has settled lately.

The passion is still there. The enthusiasm rip roars through me day in and day out…but there’s this flow now that I trust. I trust that wavelength…the wavelength of purpose and direction. Now, I understand that everything I do is about bringing light and love into this world and that’s what I was put on this earth to do. That’s what the stardust has created in me.

To be able to put everything on the line and know that you are putting yourself directly in the face of hurt, pain, loss, grief in the name of love, passion, dreams…well, this gets at me sometimes. The negatives never feel good when they happen. You are left there wondering. Those moments hit you very often at the beginning and then fade away eventually – but they suck so bad when you are in the beginning stages. You feel deeply. Oh do you feel deeply. And sometimes you can’t help but feeling a tremble coming on. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that…and to be honest it’s a feeling that I know I need to experience…but I really don’t miss it at all.

For most of my days, I am a pretty happy man. I am working to create something at my job, I have a lot of responsibility, I have kept myself incredibly healthy over this past year and am moving forward with my dreams, goals, ambitions, and purpose. I am making massive strides in my life. I am learning to love as deep as I can without being too attached to an outcome (I said learning mind you haha) and I am also learning what it means to be a man in this world. I am constantly learning, constantly evolving, constantly making mistakes, and all the while daring greatly. I am looking at myself with eyes that see the potential for great change and at the same time learning to not be too hard on myself. Some days are a lot harder than others I have to tell you. Some days, it’s hard to breathe. I put myself in positions that bring me outside of my comfort zone and a handful of times things fall apart without really much of my control – I just have to own my responsibilities for the things I have done, trust that I was doing the best I could with what I knew, and move forward in my response to situations without being too stuck on what happened.

I used to live in a world of trying to always analyze what happened instead of living in a world of what can I do now? What type of man can I be knowing what I know now? What experience can I gain from this? What can I learn? What are the resources that can help me understand why this happened and help me build a skill set to begin to sharpen up my weak spots? Thing is, you don’t know what your weak spots are until you actually start having them exploited by the best teacher in the world – life. You won’t be able to understand where your areas of development are until you make some mistakes, you make bad decisions, and you go through the game.

Some of those things hurt more than others. Some of those things hurt really really bad. But the fact that I am sometimes in pain does not mean that I am disconnected from my purpose in the world. Everyone gets hurt. But you do have an opportunity, each of us, to get back up and shake it off. That’s another thing I’ve been learning how to do this year. I’ve been learning to bounce right back up as fast as I possibly can. Sometimes it still hurts to stand there and be present…but there’s not a moment to waste feeling sorry for myself. I’m up to bigger things in this world than to sulk.

There is fear in this heart – but there is also great courage. I will continue to dare greatly.

– Evan Sanders

 

What The Stardust Made In Me is a post from: Inspirational Stories About Life

The Necessity Of Teammates

At times it feels like life is standing still. Empty. I’m not saying this as a negative thing, but rather as a new thing that I have never truly understood or allowed myself to deeply experience. The emptiness of thoughts. The emptiness of emotions. Just, here. And for whatever here may be, it’s one hell of an amazing energy to experience. I’ve been talking a lot about meditation lately because of the amount of experiences I am having doing it, but there is something very very different about the type of energy you experience when you are empty and deeply connected. It roots deeper into you than anything else. You may be feeling all of the anxiety in the world, you may be on top of the world today, but when you sit, and you sit still and just be with everything in your life, you can start to feel a special type of flow.

I’ve spent almost 1,000 posts writing away about what is going on in my life and the thoughts, feelings, events, and emotions that come along with it. Those posts have been packed with all sorts of realizations as I have accessed the depths of myself. Last week, my purpose made itself aware to me as I opened my eyes for the first time and took a peak behind the curtains. What I found was that I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing, and that most of the things that I had planned in the future were simply extensions of my “giving of love.”

And that’s what I am up to in this world – giving love and light.

For me, being in the place I am right now, I understand that I have a tremendous responsibility to not only go through with what I know is deeply rooted in me, but to those who believe in me as well. There are hundreds of thousands of people who know what The Better Man Project is and have followed me because of my mission. Spreading light and love.

There is going to be a significant amount of development with The Better Man Project over this next few months and the following half of a year +. I am opening up to clients for professional life coaching, I am finishing my certification for ACSM fitness training, and beginning to put out my ideas and advice on things instead of just writing purely about life’s situations. I guess I am going to teach a little bit more about what helps me get results in my life.

I am not perfect. Oh no I am far from perfect. But for me, I know that I have something much more valuable. I am willing to error correct constantly. I think that is essentially the name of the game in this thing called life. Do something wrong – correct. Do something write…trust me something wrong will come along…correct it again. Correcting your wrongs is a great thing! Don’t be afraid to make mistakes because then you will never learn. I know that personally for a long long time I was afraid to make mistakes and look bad in front of people. Well, that type of living was demolished a long time ago. Now, I make mistakes more than every – because I am constantly trying new things.

Don’t quit when things get hard. Right outside of your comfort zone is where you are going to grow the most. When you feel like you are being stretched and can’t take it anymore, just slow things down a bit. Try to relax and pull everything back just for a short amount of time. Speeding up does not help you a bit. When you speed up, and we used to talk about this in baseball a lot, you tend to lose your center and your body feels detached from you. But when you take a moment to slow down and breathe, you can really get that connection back even though things may be going haywire around  you. I think this is incredibly important when working and spending time with people as well. Often of times we get caught up in our own lives and all of the things that we have to do…that we forget to appreciate and show the people right in front of us…right this second…love and compassion. Love deeply in every moment – as deep as you can. If you are in pain, try loving yourself and as many things as you can. You heal so much faster by giving and sharing your love versus shutting things down.

Take this from an expert in this field. I spent more time shutting down and closing myself off because I thought I would be safe in my cocoon than letting people in when I was struggling and allowing them to take care of me. Sometimes, and I knew this deep down, I just wished someone would bring out their helping hands and handle me with the utmost care and just help me breathe. I wanted to feel their love and that would settle many things that were going on. But if you decide to shut everything down or start deleting people from your life, well, you in fact are going to be far worse than you were before. It’s better to struggle with someone that loves you than to run from someone whose willing to fight for and with you.

Life is a team sport. Sure players get traded and injured…but you are on the field with your team. You can be the best pitcher in the world, but you are still one of 9. So bring some teammates into your life and start appreciating the positions they play. Some of those relationships are going to be absolutely critical. Loving relationships. Family relationships. Friendships. But you need all of them. You need those support mechanisms in your life because without them, you start to feel a deep and empty feeling inside.

So nurture yourself – of course – but don’t forget that the greatest gift another person can give you is allowing them to nurture you and bring you up. Coming from personal experience, I know how much this fills my heart.

– Evan Sanders

The Necessity Of Teammates is a post from: Inspirational Stories About Life

Old Dog, New Tricks

 

Well I’m not that old, but this dog is learning new tricks.

In fact, I am reinventing myself day in and day out. Let me tell you what has been going on lately. In one way or another, we are given a little push by the universe – maybe shaking us up a bit – and from the depths a little bubble surfaces and suddenly delivers you your purpose. This moment actually came from the depths of my meditation practice. I was sitting there, my alarm went off for me to end my meditation, and then…pop. I realized that what I am doing right now, the writing, the practicing for coaching school, the practicing for speeches and everything that surrounds the purpose of The Better Man Project is what my purpose actually is. For the longest time I was trying to figure out if this was just a piece of the puzzle, but apparently I’ve been so blind to the fact that this is in fact what I should be doing.

Pretty amazing feeling.

So when that happened, and when I was shaken up a bit, I was able to flip the cards I was dealt and see that there was in fact a massive force working in the background…and all I needed to do was pull the curtain back to see that I was already doing my purpose…I was just significantly disconnected from it. So I turned a negative into a positive and started to move. And oh boy have I been moving this week. Book after book after book – videos, articles, audiobooks, everything I can get my hands on I have been digesting – all coming from a place of “this is going to help me with my purpose and express that more fully.” So I’ve been burning through everything and having these massive realizations that are connecting with me deeply.

When I am reading books, I am always highlighting the things that stand out to me the most. But to take it even farther, I’ve started to write down these little sayings on flashcards with a sharpie and going through them every single day. They remind me of what I have learned (twice a day) and keep me in a constant state of learning. Needless to say, that stack of flash cards is almost 300 strong. I can’t even believe how big that stack is going to be by the end of the year. Probably thousands.

In a couple of months, I am going to be opening up my professional life coaching business for the first time. I am beyond excited about this because I have 1. been dreaming about it for a long time and 2. I am fully ready and willing to help people free their minds, hearts, and bodies. The reason why I am studying for my American College of Sports Medicine physical trainer exam is so I can accurately and knowledgeably help people free their bodies…along with my professional integral coach practice. I wanted to know the specific ways I could do this…and so at the same time I am studying like crazy for that test.

I’ve realized that all of the work that I have done over the past 4 years is all now converging to a point. I can feel it in my bones. The knowledge that I have gained from digital and social media building are converging into me building my own online practice that will stand out amongst others. The creation of social media communities will come into play. The time I spent working my butt off trying to build something from scratch is coming into play. All of the books and the studying I have ever done is coming into play. The years and years of not making a dime off of what I have been doing…well, that’s also coming into play as well. All of these things are converging and I am having that feeling of things lighting on fire.

So we are going to light it up and watch it burn.

Life, now that my purpose has bubbled up, is pretty darn exciting. The tough times continue to test me – but since I am deeply rooted in what I am doing and what I am set out to create in this world, they pass much more quickly. That has been one of the biggest differences that I have noticed so far. Things are coming and going constantly, but I have identified with something that never changes – this type of energy that has always been here and will always be here.

It’s a bit hard to explain…maybe somewhere along this journey I will find the words for it.

If you don’t know what your purpose is yet – spend some time alone. Meditate, or just be in solitude. Turn off your phone for a portion of the day and just sit there and feel through it. It’s not going to come up in your mind, but rather from an energy deep within. Don’t force it…just open yourself up.

When it hits you…and it will…be ready to feel this incredible feeling. You might not know exactly what to do right away, but you will know that feeling when it arrives.

So be ready.

If you’re even considering finding that something that really matters to you, you are already on your way.

– Evan Sanders

 

Old Dog, New Tricks is a post from: Inspirational Stories About Life

The Depths Of Feeling

We feel deeply and we experience these emotions that run through us with uncertainty day after day, moment after moment. When we are in pain, they amplify. We can help it. It just happens. The effects of the events in our lives seem to know exactly where to strike us in the heart and we have all sorts of feelings run through us. It hasn’t been the easiest week for me. To be completely honest about it, I’ve had a week of incredible breakthroughs, and at the same time, feeling deeply…I mean deeply.

To be able to give in this world and at the same moment you give, let go, is an incredibly hard, painful, heart wrenching lesson to learn. I’ve gone through quite a few things in my young life so far, and this lesson is by far one of the most challenging lessons for me to continue learning. I am a feeler. I can shut everything off – my mind etc and when I’m in a moment and I am truly connected, I feel. I feel peoples emotions as if they were my own. When my feelings run up on me the depths of them always give me a bit of a startle. It’s not a curse to be able to feel so deeply. It’s a gift. I didn’t used to always think of it like that, but the truth is, the more and more I realize my connections with people and the world matter, the more I see this as a strict advantage towards giving love.

And love is the name of the game.

For a long time I have floundered around trying to figure out what I wanted to do with myself or what my “purpose” was until I finally came upon the realization that I am doing exactly what I need to be doing. In the times where I was trying to figure out if I should be doing a completely different profession, I always felt like I had lost my center. My center and my home is right here – writing, speaking, creating poetry…about life and love. I want my entire life to be an expression of love and to help people access this deep love as well.

It makes sense that I hurt so badly sometimes. The depth of my pain and my hurt comes hand in hand with my ability to feel and love people on that same level. With one comes the others. Jung said, “The brighter the light the darker the shadow.” I’m not longer afraid of this type of pain though. When it arises, I let it flow through me and in one way or another, nourish me. You may be asking “How in the world are you nourished by your deepest pains?” Fact is these pains are simply an outcome of my deepest love that simply “turned south” for whatever reason. I can’t hold onto those reasons. I’ve found myself trying time and time again throughout the years and it never really works out. It only goes away when you surrender to what has happened instead of what you wished to happen. Surrendering is difficult, but you can’t ever change the past. Ever.

I’ve found myself in little ruts where I go…”Well if all of this sh*t is going to consistently fall apart and go south, then what the hell is the point?” I think it’s a very fair question to ask when time after time you go through hell and want to quit. But, there’s an equal force at play always egging you on to give it another go. To keep loving deeply. To keep trying as hard as you can. To keep giving as much as you can. That purpose that resonates deeply within your heart guides you to make art out of your entire life and share it with others so that they can free themselves from their struggles and demons as well.

That, is what The Better Man Project has become for me. That, resonates deeply down into my bones. This…is exactly what I should be doing with my life. This is my calling.

– Evan Sanders

The Depths Of Feeling is a post from: Inspirational Stories About Life

The Bubble From The Depths

 

I wasn’t expecting it at all. But to be honest, that’s the point. I wasn’t expecting it. These last few weeks since school began have been a little bit unnerving at times because I felt turned inside out. I felt dynamics changing inside and really just had to trust that they were sending me in the right direction. My coaches warned me that many of the relationships in my life might change as well because of these shifting tides. But faith led me through that.

Being able to tell yourself that everything is going to turn out just fine, and actually believe it, is something that is relatively new for me. In the past 9 months, my life has changed drastically. I mean drastically. Today I really sat down and took a dive through my Instagram to really begin to understand just how much I have morphed and changed throughout this year. What I can tell you is that when I came back home from LA…my life was in shambles, I felt like a wreck, I had no motivation to do anything, my confidence had taken the plunge probably down to negative land, and I was a significantly overeaten physical mess. Have to love that resumé eh?

To be honest, I started because there were a lot of extrinsic motivators built in with a few intrinsic motivations that I knew that would carry me through if I went for it once last time. I saw myself as “the rookie” and I was ready to give it everything I had. What has transpired over the past 9 months feels like nothing short of a miracle. I got my body back – in fact, I got something better than I ever imagined – I accomplished an incredible goal with an amazing trainer – my confidence rose astronomically and I started to attract love and beauty into my life. Those were all gifts because I decided to take a risk with my life. I put it all out on the line and even though things came and went, I still received them lovingly.

I make so many mistakes. I make mistake after mistake after mistake. But there’s something much more different about me now than previously. I’ve surrendered to that process and am on a path to correcting those mistakes each and every day. This project can be seen as the efforts of a man who is correcting mistakes constantly. But I’m learning! Oh man am I learning. There is a non stop process of looking at my life and seeing the areas where I can improve. This is not out of ego or trying to be better than anyone else, but I genuinely love the fact that I have places where I can improve my life. Deep down, and I will get into this in a second, I knew that this would help me because it would allow me to tap into my greatest purpose of all.

So what is that purpose? Well, without knowing it, I’ve been actually doing it for the past 4 years. Through deep and compassionate love, helping people to free their minds, bodies, and hearts. That’s what resonates down to my core. There’s no better feeling in the world that hearing someone tell you how moved they were by something you said or wrote. But you see, I didn’t know this about myself because I was so blocked for such a long time. I was always seeking instead of just being here. I used my goals as things that would complete me instead of using my deep purpose and expression of that basically dictate what the outcomes would be. I was disconnected from myself in so many ways because I deep down had an insecurity about not having enough. I am enough. I am more than enough.

As I sit on my meditation mat day after day, breathing deeply into what is, I start to feel the presence of love everywhere. My disconnected self dies and I connect with everything. I can see energy. I can see ripples. I can see how things are constantly coming and going, always flowing, and there’s this presence that has been here before forever and will be here after. There’s this warming feeling to everything, and day after day I am connecting with it.

That connection, and the vulnerability to allow the deepest darkest thoughts to flow through me as well as experience all of the other thoughts and emotions that arise, brought a bubble down from the depths of whatever it was and it hit the surface and I was ready for it. My purpose bubbled up and I can’t tell you how clear, awake, and connected that made me. There have been signs of this for a long time, some signs that I will keep very very close to my heart because they are so personal, but now it has become clear.

Despite difficulties at times. Despite pain and hurt…I am happy. Very happy.

– Evan Sanders

 

The Bubble From The Depths is a post from: Inspirational Stories About Life